The Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council (MSR&PC) invests checkoff dollars to support the Northern Soy Marketing’s (NSM) annual Crop Tour, connecting international buyers with the farmers and businesses behind the soybean supply chain. During the five-day tour, 10 attendees from Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand traveled through Minnesota, South Dakota and Washington state to see firsthand how the soybeans move from farm to processing facilities.  

Upon visiting Patrick O’Leary’s farm in Swift County, his guests from Asia were blown away by the cool, blustery conditions.  

“You call this fall?” asked Thu Huong Uong of Green Feed in Vietnam. “I call this winter.” 

The 50 and 60-degree weather was colder than attendees expected, but it had a silver lining: The chill sparked thoughtful questions about how cool temperatures benefit soybean production in the Upper Midwest. 

“Harvested cool, stored cool and shipped cool,” O’Leary, who serves on both MSR&PC and NSM, said during a tour of his Danvers, Minn. farm. “We have an idea that the cool weather aids in slowing degradation of nutrients down in the soybeans. We don’t have mold issues; we can control the negative things that can affect soybeans because of the cold.”  

As a founding member of NSM, MSR&PC has two representatives serving on the NSM farmer-led board. Glen Groth joined the board in 2021 and has been serving as NSM shair since July 2024, in addition to serving as the MSR&PC treasurer. O’Leary has served on NSM for nearly a decade and is a longstanding Council director and former chair. 

Each tour attendee is involved in purchasing feed products at their feed mill companies and brought unique perspectives and reasons for participating in the Crop Tour. For Uong, the tour aligned with her expanding role at Green Feed. She began her career seven years ago as a corn buyer and has since added soymeal purchasing responsibilities. 

“I am dealing with soybean meal almost every day and I am always asking questions to the traders to understand the actual farming, I ask a lot of questions every year about how the production is going and the weather,” Uong said. “This is the first opportunity for me to really see the supply chain up close.” 

NSM takes pride in offering the tour to encourage trade partners to see the supply chain in action, from farms in Minnesota and South Dakota to first purchasers Ag Processing Inc (AGP) in Dawson, Minn., and Central Farmers Cooperative in Colton, S.D., and ending with soy’s final destination in the U.S. at export terminals at Grays Harbor near Aberdeen, Wash. 

“This program is different than other programs. It got me interested because I can see the processing and the farm,” Uong said. “For me, learning about the farm is the most interesting, to just look at it and ask them questions. It is different when you are at the field asking questions.” 

The Crop Tour is a critical aspect of promoting northern-grown soy while advancing NSM’s mission to provide a more accurate picture of soy feeding quality by considering critical essential amino acid value, rather than crude protein, as the true measure of soy quality. The tour also stopped by the University of Minnesota soybean quality research lab and plots, plant-based feed ingredient producer Houdek, and South Dakota State University for discussions about livestock nutrition research and the value of northern-grown soymeal.